Blame the RUC who the army were ordered to support, knew the situation on the ground and were a bunch of bigoted arseholes. The Army was caught in the middle of a situation it wasn't prepared for, wasn't trained for, didn't know who to trust and followed orders. The ordinary men and women of the regular armed forces at the time were incredibly bitter about the whole mess and wanted nothing to do with it. How do I know that? My father was regular RAF at the time the Army was sent in and you don't want to know exactly what he thought of both sides to the day he died. His ex service friends were exactly the same.
 
Is there any possibility that the British might have started something? (Intentionally or accidentally).

For example if when the 1970 Arms Crisis breaks the British Government manage to misinterpret it as the Irish military intentionally supporting paramilitary groups north of the border?

Or perhaps a British patrol accidentally crossing the border and having some sort of encounter with the Garda where they refuse to let themselves end up in Irish custody?
 
Or perhaps a British patrol accidentally crossing the border and having some sort of encounter with the Garda where they refuse to let themselves end up in Irish custody?
Accidentally or deliberately crossing the border?

There was incidents of both.

The SAS in particular didn't seem to care bout the border.
 
AqSo we're just going to creatively edit out said soldiers activities are we?
Don't forget that by the time Bloody Sunday occurred the Provisionals had already taken steps to provoke exactly the type of overreaction that the Paras obliged them with including the murders of several soldiers particularly the honey trap murders of two teenage soldiers. It doesn't excuse Bloody Sunday at all, but it does provide some context. The Army acted like complete arseholes granted but they also did exactly what the Provies were attempting to engineer.
 
Is there any possibility that the British might have started something? (Intentionally or accidentally).

For example if when the 1970 Arms Crisis breaks the British Government manage to misinterpret it as the Irish military intentionally supporting paramilitary groups north of the border?

Or perhaps a British patrol accidentally crossing the border and having some sort of encounter with the Garda where they refuse to let themselves end up in Irish custody?
I kind of like my idea of having both the Irish military and British military prepare covert spec ops strikes on the same IRA target at roughly the same time at night under cover of darkness. Only for the intel to turn out to be bad and the target is empty. Then some confusion erupts with the two raiding forces briefly thinking the other is IRA and a gunbattle erupting before someone comes to their senses.
 
Don't forget that by the time Bloody Sunday occurred the Provisionals had already taken steps to provoke exactly the type of overreaction that the Paras obliged them with including the murders of several soldiers particularly the honey trap murders of two teenage soldiers. It doesn't excuse Bloody Sunday at all, but it does provide some context. The Army acted like complete arseholes granted but they also did exactly what the Provies were attempting to engineer.
It wasn’t just Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy Flats happened months before that, and while I fully take your point that the Provisionals wanted to provoke such incidents, surely the burden of responsibility lies on the trained military force for use of lethal force, not the terrorists. I mean hell the Nationalists may not wanted to be British and not consider themselves as such, but they were still British citizens...
 
Is there any possibility that the British might have started something? (Intentionally or accidentally).

For example if when the 1970 Arms Crisis breaks the British Government manage to misinterpret it as the Irish military intentionally supporting paramilitary groups north of the border?

Or perhaps a British patrol accidentally crossing the border and having some sort of encounter with the Garda where they refuse to let themselves end up in Irish custody?
It doesn’t really need the British to use force to punish Ireland for any actions that London disagreed with, this is when Ireland is overwhelmingly economically dependent on the U.K. market, a simple tariff on Irish goods and soon enough Dublin would have to change positions if that was the issue.

Given how much intelligence services would have known about Irish government and Army plans/operations I have little doubt that they knew exactly what was going on in the Arms Crisis as it happened, so I think you’d need something more than that. However the options are limited, as has been pointed out the Army capabilities are highly limited at this point, hell our Ranger Wing is only forming at this point so even “unconventional” support isn’t an option.

As to border incidents, it happened regularly enough, depending on the unit, some respectfully got back onto their own side, some didn’t. But when you consider again nothing happened even up to the DUP “riot” at a Garda station, it’s unlikely to lead to any military action, at most some snarky diplomatic language.
 
Don't forget that by the time Bloody Sunday occurred the Provisionals had already taken steps to provoke exactly the type of overreaction that the Paras obliged them with
And so the British army earned the reputation in Northern Ireland as being just another terrorist organisation much the same as the UDA the UVF the INLA the IRA or the RUC. Tit for tat reprisals and all.

While yes it was only certain elements of the British army it stuck for all.
 
Don't forget that by the time Bloody Sunday occurred the Provisionals had already taken steps to provoke exactly the type of overreaction that the Paras obliged them with including the murders of several soldiers particularly the honey trap murders of two teenage soldiers. It doesn't excuse Bloody Sunday at all, but it does provide some context. The Army acted like complete arseholes granted but they also did exactly what the Provies were attempting to engineer.
The Paras who were very good soldiers, but were not the ideal ones to send in there. They were trained for maximum aggression.
Not the best choice, when the Provos wanted the British army to act very aggressively.
 
One of a number of incidents I was considering.

Actually the wiki lists a number of different incidents in that article.
another incident
The Marines boarded Prime Minister Charles Haughey’s private yacht in Carlingford Lough in 1990.

If Charles Haughey was was on board and was shot/killed or arrested?
 
another incident
The Marines boarded Prime Minister Charles Haughey’s private yacht in Carlingford Lough in 1990.

If Charles Haughey was was on board and was shot/killed or arrested?
Irish politics might be improved?
Seriously though, given the number of incidents where the UK could have used as a Cause Belli and they didn't it's hard to imagine any event that either side would allow escalate to state level violence.
 
And so the British army earned the reputation in Northern Ireland as being just another terrorist organisation much the same as the UDA the UVF the INLA the IRA or the RUC. Tit for tat reprisals and all.

While yes it was only certain elements of the British army it stuck for all.
Yes, it was a failure of both leadership and military discipline. I have never tried to argue otherwise. All other moral or ethical considerations aside, doing exactly what your opponent wants you to do is not generally a very good strategy.
And, yes, the British Army should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the various paramilitary organisations.
But it is worth bearing in mind that the PIRA strategy was not to prevent RUC or Army brutality but to actually engineer instances thereof.
 
This may really be ASB but didn't the IRA have contact, relations, and supplies from the Soviets? What if the Soviets said they would back the Irish?
 
This may really be ASB but didn't the IRA have contact, relations, and supplies from the Soviets? What if the Soviets said they would back the Irish?
The Offical IRA did. The Provos did not, that was why the IRA split between the Offical IRA(Marxist) and the Provisional IRA(non-Marxist)in 1969.
The Provos got their weapons and money from America and Lybia.
 
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Yes, it was a failure of both leadership and military discipline. I have never tried to argue otherwise. All other moral or ethical considerations aside, doing exactly what your opponent wants you to do is not generally a very good strategy.
And, yes, the British Army should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the various paramilitary organisations.
But it is worth bearing in mind that the PIRA strategy was not to prevent RUC or Army brutality but to actually engineer instances thereof.
SOP for any guerilla army is to provoke the conventional forces they are fighting in to take brutally and repressive measure against the general population to increase their support.
It was the same for the British in ww2 when German bombed Britain it increased peoples willingness to support the war effort.
 
I kind of like my idea of having both the Irish military and British military prepare covert spec ops strikes on the same IRA target at roughly the same time at night under cover of darkness. Only for the intel to turn out to be bad and the target is empty. Then some confusion erupts with the two raiding forces briefly thinking the other is IRA and a gunbattle erupting before someone comes to their senses.
At which point apologies and recriminations are made, each blaming the other. Even that isn't going to escalate things to a war level. Again: dead member of the Royal Family in Irish waters, dead Ambassador and wife in Ireland, the UK embassy burned to the ground, long time suggestion/rumour of UK collusion with the largest terror attack on the island against Dublin and Monaghan... None of this triggered such an escalation, so why would a regrettable "accident" do so?
 
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